Abstract  -- by Sapfarah ( sapfarah@geocities.com )

** I was partly inspired from Kunimitsu's TTT ending (and I still think
the game s###s) and this can be a possible aftermath to another story
I typed, Silent Knight.
Also, I finished this after Zephyr announced she was making a Kuni
shrine... so well, that's my good luck champagne. Hope that good luck
it will be! **

	Snow.... as far as she could see...
	She was alive.
	Her clothes were wet from snow, lying below her, coming down 
softly on her back, settling and cruelly melting cold upon her clothes, 
dampening them. She was alive.
	She struggled to her knees and felt the pain in her limbs. Pain 
of the freezing cold, of water turning to ice upon her, of the sharp 
cold wind hissing around her.
	It was dark.

	Her feet dived in the snow unto the middle of her shins. 
Kunimitsu tightened her hold around her and walked on. She was dead and 
from all forgotten. The manji would no longer hunt her. What's the use 
of hunting down a ghost? Yoshimitsu had saved her life in that duel, 
leaving her with no past to hold on, nowhere left to go but for 
straight ahead, remembered only by the biting wind and the cruel snow. 
White as death...
	Two tears streamed down her eyes on the face she hid and they 
felt aching cold. Death, endless white and forlorn, all alone... and 
she wondered if that was where He walked...
	The body of a woman walked through the snow, wearing clothes 
that only covered her but couldn't protect her from the attack of the 
winter. She wore a mask before her face, a mask white as the snow, in 
the shape of a fox, with a stamped expression of the battle's cruelty. 
The woman had her arms wrapped around her wet clothes to keep warm. But 
under her mask, she smiled.
	They were walking on the same path... on the same world... on 
the same tracks... each on his own, both lonely yet together...
	Blissfully she closed her eyes and she walked on. That's how 
dead people should walk...


	Two bright brown eyes hardly blinked, filled with interest to 
the amazing little world they had discovered. Snails of beautiful 
designs crawled on the tree's wrinkled trunk. He picked up one with his 
small hand and put it higher than the rest. Then he observed again.
	"Jin come home, dinner time!" his mother called at him.
	Jin looked over his shoulder. His mother stood in the front 
porch of their house with a basket of clothes at hand, waiting for him. 
He got up and run to her.
	"Go wash your hands, honey," Jun said mildly to her three year 
old boy. Jin run inside the house, faithful to his mother and Jun stood 
for a moment, looking at her son with a warm smile on her face.
	She knew that everything was true, that everything was all 
right, the best that it could be whenever she would see her little son 
child, the brightest sun in her heart.


	'Jin'...
	A beautiful name... a name of hope, given with love and 
affection to the most beloved creature of a woman's life... A little 
angel on earth...
	His child...
	She knew it was his child because he was the son of that woman 
and he looked something like him, although she felt that he was nothing 
like Him...
	He was bright as he was dark, a brilliant ray of sun unlike him 
who was the blackness of the night... happy as he was solemn, untamed 
as he was never free...
	Jin is a beautiful name for such a child.
	He had a beautiful name too. Beautiful for him but Kunimitsu 
would not remember it. He had become a someone in her memory, a man 
without a face but his voice she remembered too well... she couldn't 
forget it, especially as her internal emptiness seemed appropriate for 
him to live in it. She heard his hollow voice from time to time, saying 
nothing, speaking to her. And it was soothing.
	She had promised to herself to forget him. To leave him rest 
and not bring him out again to face harm from anything anymore. She 
would treasure him and shelter him with her forgetfulness. Where no one 
could ever find him again and no one would again steal him... where he 
would never have to suffer death again. Where she could never see him.
	She hid in the forest and watched at them however. Her and the 
little child, so much like him... For some days now, she saw the world 
before the child's eyes and the loneliness of the woman, living for 
both her son and herself... she saw the child living in his mother's 
pain, without knowing it himself, making it his own...
	Who was she to tell?


	Jun smiled to her little son as she covered him with the 
blanket.
	"Sleep well, Jin," she said softly with eyes glimmering with 
love. Jin had strange eyes... just like his father, when he looked at 
her, he had this eagerness to devour all the answers from her face... 
and this is why Jun sometimes couldn't help showing a sad face to her 
little son. He made her remember some extremely surprising moments, 
when Kazuya had an expression freed from all the troubles he had seen, 
without his arsenal of cruelty and malice... and those times he looked 
at her just like that, asking her... wanting to see what she had seen, 
hoping that she would guide him to a place safe and calm and 
peaceful...
	She closed her eyes once but tears fled from them. She couldn't 
take him there to that other place... and he kept looking like this at 
her from her son's eyes...
	A soft palm touched her face and dried her tears.
	"Don't cry mom..."
	Jin's little voice was melodious and soothing... he was already 
grown up more than his small age. His eyes were clean brown with bright 
innocence...
	Jun held his hand on her face and smiled. She would be strong 
for her little son. She would keep him safe. She would take him to that 
place.
	Jin slightly smiled innocently and in his face she saw his 
assuring smile, saying everything would be all right...
	Together they could. They could protect this child. They could 
fight life together. She could take him to that safe place...

	She stood up slowly, letting a breath through her lips, 
wrapping her arms around her. Jin lied on his bed, it was dark 
outside...
	She looked at the window but it wasn't the starry night she 
stared at for what she saw there made her heart stop.
	A face of a ghost was leaning on her window but she had seen 
that face before... a mask of a fox stood there, looking inside into 
her house... Kunimitsu.
	She didn't know what to do, until she noticed her hands. Those 
strong hands, wearing ninja gloves laid on the window with fondness, as 
if they were touching what she so much longed to feel, what those 
carved eyes were looking at, lying on her child's bed...
	Could she be right to trust her? Jun had always been this way. 
Trusting and being compassionate to every one in a moment of weakness.
	Kunimitsu's head looked up at her and she motioned calmness at 
her.
	"Wait..." she said with her lips and went outside.
	Jun got out of the door and saw Kunimitsu still sitting at the 
window, looking at her. She swallowed and calmed herself.
	"Please... come in..." she said.
	The masked woman got up and slowly she walked to her. Her face 
was bowing.

	Jun covered her shoulders with a blanket, then she sat on a 
chair, looking at her. Her eyes wanted to talk, find some answers... 
but what would she tell her? She hated her and yet she couldn't. It was 
all in the past and...
	...and she so longed to get it back again...
	But both remained quiet, thinking back at the past each had, 
sharing the sorrow of remembrance together... until something came to 
disturb the mutual agreement for silence.
	It was a small child, standing sleepy at the door, with his 
lovely face creased from the brief slumber.
	"Mom?" he croaked softly as he rubbed his eyes... Jun turned 
her head to her little son and Kunimitsu...
	She gave a jerk and her heartbeat grew much faster, pounding in 
her freezing chest.
	The little boy was looking at her with ignorant eyes, brown 
eyes of question...
	She shuddered and didn't notice Jun looking with understanding 
at her, until her boy walked at her, seeking for hideout.
	"Honey... this is Kunimitsu... she's a friend..."

	Jun didn't know whether to trust that woman near her son but 
her feelings told her that Jin had nothing to fear from her... 
Kunimitsu would never hurt his son...
	Jin was still an unsuspecting child, easily daring to talk to 
new people... even when they carried a scythe and covered their face 
with a mask...
	He stood before her and Kunimitsu had dared to touch him. Her 
hands read his face, touched him to see that he was real, looking at 
him as if...
	'As if she owns him...' Jun thought gravely.
	But could she blame her? Could she find her guilty for loving 
Him? Shouldn't she thank her for... not hating him like everyone else? 
Even if it disturbed her that she looked with such longing at her son?
	'What do you mean? That he should be your son? That you should 
be nursing him? Holding him? Caring after him?' she questioned herself.
	And she sighed with sorrow, thinking that perhaps...
	'Perhaps you should...' 
	And she put her palm gently on Kunimitsu's shoulder.

	This boy could never suspect... he would never know what she 
had seen but his eyes were full of questions in them, asking for 
answers he didn't know he wanted and she never dared to recall and 
give...
	His eyes were intense, so intense but so bright and pure... so 
diverse and so familiar... and why did it feel like... he could see 
past her concealment... feel her heart... see her tears?
	"Are you sad?" he said.
	Tears shook her as she held the child among her hands and then 
he...
	He reached out his hand to her face~
	~his hands caught the nozzle of her mask and~
	~he tried to pull the mask from her face...
	And he would see, he would know in his eyes that suddenly she 
saw again like before, from the start, for real, like every time, those 
eyes, his face, Him...

	Kunimitsu never spoke. But she couldn't gulp down that deep 
howl as she jumped up, flying far from Jun and the little boy with his 
hands on her mask. She run to the door and burst outside, before Jun 
even called at her to stop...

	"Mom?" the small voice hesitantly asked.
	Jun picked up her little boy.
	"It's time to go to bed, Jin..." she said, looking at the 
gaping door.
	Jin rested his little head on her shoulder.
	'My thoughts are on you...' she mentally said to the one who 
had just run away.
	She thought she had nothing to lean on but that night she 
realised some others had far less...
	She tenderly tightened her hold around her precious treasure in 
her arms.


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